Big Tobacco Strikes Back at Historian in Court

He has criticized colleagues who aid companies' legal defense

Linda A. Cicero, Stanford U.

Historians, like Stanford U.'s Robert N. Proctor, have played a key role in tobacco trials, both as expert witnesses and as consultants.Tobacco companies facing lawsuits want to prevent his appearing in court on behalf of plaintiffs.

By Peter Schmidt

A Stanford University professor who has sought to expose ties
between historians and the tobacco industry is being accused in
court of having broken the law in challenging the employment of
four graduate students at the University of Florida as researchers
assisting tobacco companies in litigation.

In motions filed in two Florida state courts last month,
tobacco-company lawyers allege that Robert N. Proctor, a professor
of the history of science at Stanford, engaged in illegal
witness